The Quietus writers and staff select fifty of their favourite dance music remixes, from much-loved classics to personal selections

A great remix is a rare and precious thing, yet the qualities that make a remix great tend to elude easy definition. Sometimes it takes nothing less than total demolition, fucking with the formula so violently that what finally emerges bears next to no resemblance to the track you originally placed on the chopping block. Others it's quite the opposite: a slight extension here, an extra couple of percussive elements there, a few bars reshuffled in either direction, enough to subtly shift the energetic balance of an already great track into overdrive. Indeed, in the dance music world where functionality is often the primary concern, a remix often has to offer little more than a utilitarian makeover in order to succeed in its objectives.

In any case, in a world where advances in accessibility and power of music technology have enabled remixes to become a ubiquitous feature of the pop music landscape - whether that's filler mixes padding out indie rock singles, perfectly serviceable dance makeovers on new 12"s that'll get dropped for a few months and then never again, or the countless novelty dubstep and trap edits archived on YouTube (some of which prove surprisingly inventive) - it's still comparatively rare to come across one that transcends or enhances its source material in some way.

This feature came about in a roundabout way, via discussions in The Quietus office about our favourite remixes that aren't primarily intended for the dancefloor - a follow-up feature we'll be publishing on the site in the near future. From there we ended up chatting about our favourite explicitly club-focused remixes - those that fall under the brackets of what you'd generally describe as modern day 'dance music', in the lineage running from disco through house and techno, hardcore rave, jungle, garage, dubstep, grime and more. (While dub, reggae, hip hop and more are, of course, musical styles often intended mainly for dancing, for argument's sake we opted to include them in our 'non-dance music remixes' list.)

One email to The Quietus' contributors later and we'd assembled this list - one that cuts broadly across contemporary club music genres, with production treatments that vary from near-imperceptible to brutal, but whose fifty selections share an ability to draw new life and presence out of their source material. Some are well known and by now classic selections; others are personal choices you'd otherwise need to dig a little deeper for. As ever, it's presented in no particular order, and is not intended to be some spurious 'objective and comprehensive' list of 'the best' dance music remixes in the world. Instead this list, selected by Quietus writers and office staff, is a selection of remixes we deemed as favourites during the window of time when we were assembling it. As such, we've doubtless missed out plenty of tracks worthy of inclusion - please do let us know what you'd have picked and why in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

In a sense, Tom Moulton is the most important remixer on this list. His credits include inventing the remix, the 12" single for DJs and the extended breakdown. While comparable innovations in dub had already occurred in Jamaica, in the terms of soul and disco and most forms of dance music that followed in their wake, he is the daddy. Perhaps Moulton wouldn't even be considered a remixer by today's standards - he is an editor and an extender, but an editor and extender par excellence. His stamp is to lengthen sumptuous Philly grooves in a fluid and dynamic manner, never drawing attention to the process. At no point during these sumptuous eleven minutes does this track do anything other than delight, and to this day it slays dancefloors. James Murphy and Soulwax ended their recent six hour Despacio set in Hammersmith with this with the house lights turned up, to rapturous and distinctly un-Londonlike hysteria from the crowd. This mix is the original as far as I'm concerned. That said, trainspotters can derive enjoyment from poring over the mix looking for differences - Moulton's mix is probably constructed from extra recording session tapes or previously unheard versions, as it has a different, straighter four-to-the-floor disco drumbeat compared to the congas and funkier drumming on the 7". It also has some beautifully heartbroken ad libs by Teddy Pendergrass that linger in the memory long after the track's ended. John Doran

Phreek's 'Weekend' was a prime cut of late-70s NY disco: a diva vocal triumph riding a conga-fied train to victory. But after years of service in Larry Levan's sacred Paradise Garage sets, it got the zap of new life it deserved. You can hear the voice of the Garage itself in this fresh-for-83 version, as much in what was removed as in what remained. Christine Wiltshire and co are still belting out one of the tightest ever songs "about getting laid", as Levan put it. But his idiosyncratic ear, developed over years of working with a unique 'three dimensional' sound system, did them full, interstellar justice with this mix. One skittering hi-hat, double snare-strike or synth freeze from the deep space of that extended intro is enough to give you the shivers. But it's the subtle flux throughout that allows the singers to shine: coruscating keyboard licks, an insinuating, psychedelicised guitar strut and the beats themselves slide into the darkness and return refreshed, giving the impression that the possibilities of the night are opening up in line with the singer's commands. The only sure things are a bassline that means business and that chorus: "Tonight it's party time, it's party time tonight." Lee Arizuno

LFO - 'LFO (Leeds Warehouse Mix)'
(Warp, 1990)

LFO - Gez Varley and Mark Bell - were among the UK's true club music innovators. At the birth of Warp Records was this heavy track, 'LFO' itself, and it still sounds fresh 23-odd years later. Varley and Bell met while studying at Leeds and passed this, their first and best tune, to Nightmares On Wax to test in the clubs. This led to their signing and wider success, with 'LFO' pounding its way into the Top 20. The 'low frequency oscillation' of LFO is quite literally spelt out on a 1980s Speak N Spell, while its bleep motifs are shrouded in a post-industrial fug, like the moment the mushroom cloud rises over Sheffield in BBC cold war drama Threads. Those piano notes could be Vangelis, the deep bass rumble could be from Detroit, but those blips and bleeps are unmistakeably the sound of a working class music scene breaking free in the North West. The 'Leeds Warehouse Mix' is the definitive realisation of this acidic anthem, and when that bass rumbles it still hits you right in the thorax. Nick Hutchings

Moodymann - 'I Can't Kick This Feelin' When It Hits'
(KDJ, 1996)

This might count as cheating, given that 'I Can't Kick This Feelin' When It Hits' was released as a Moodymann original, but it's included here by virtue of being, to all intents and purposes, a beautifully crafted study of a single track: Chic's classic 'I Want Your Love'. Throughout his back catalogue are countless examples of Kenny Dixon Jr's simple yet evocative way with a sample - not least the way that the real-world atmosphere of his tracks, which brim with incidental detail, crowd whoops, chatter and spoken word, brings a whole new dimension to the notion of 'deep' house. (On headphones or large speakers his albums, which tend to unfurl as unbroken runs of humid, hazed-out party ambience, capture that aesthetic in glorious 3D.) But 'I Can't Kick This Feelin' When It Hits' is a personal favourite, simply for the exquisite way Dixon takes a bare handful of elements - a single bar's worth of drums and bassline, a pair of looped vocals, chicken-scratch guitar - and inverts the original's fluid, expressive maximalism into a taut, stiffly funky exercise in spiraling tension. Disco recast as agonising perpetual escalation, it emerges with careful and considered poise from murky string ambience, struts archly into full view over eight minutes before receding again into the mire, leaving delighted shivers in its wake. Rory Gibb

'Missing' is arguably one of the definitive, and most commercially successful, 'better-than-the-original' remixes. A year after it first appeared on 1994's Amplified Heart, Todd Terry took the track out of the melancholy and straight onto the dancefloor. Splicing its delicate original guitar lines into a throbbing house hook, it left its predecessor to become a forlorn forgotten shadow, as it went on to dominate radio play and tear up international dancefloors in the months that followed. Somewhat sadly, my earliest memory of it is being reproached for kicking the sofa along to its skittering percussion in my new flashing trainers at a family gathering, my grandparents handing out gin and tonics as it played along on MTV in the background. Sophie Coletta

Nitzer Ebb - 'Join In The Chant (Surgeon Remix)'
(unreleased)

FUN? You go out for FUN do you? All with the mates, out from uni, out from work, top bants, funny dance, nice one, cop off? Or is clubbing about more than one definition of that word: oh please give me submission, brutality, sex, the hilarious joy of having your addled head used as a punchbag at 5am. If the latter, then Tony Surgeon's reworking of Nitzer Ebb's 'Join The Chant' (itself hardly a knitted Tallulah Gosh b-side) is the belt-strap-on-the-buttocks-banger for you. I received prime flagellation from this dominator when Regis dropped it at the end of his set for Blackest Ever Black at Corsica Studios last autumn, and it chopped my joyous little head off. The only other way of hearing it seems to be a dodgy YouTube rip from a Surgeon set, which means we all ought offer to Messrs Surgeon, Daniel Miller, Douglas McCarthy in prayer for a 12". All together now... "Gold, gold, gold, gold / Church, church, church, church / Guns, guns, guns, guns / Fire, fire, fire / MUSCLE & HATE! MUSCLE & HATE!" Amen. Luke Turner

Fugees – 'Ready Or Not (DJ Zinc Remix)'
(White Label, 1996)

"When I raise my trigger finger all you fuckers hit the deck…" The tune that is to blame for all the youts doing gun fingers at UK d&b nights, DJ Zinc's unofficial jungle tear-up of the Enya-sampling 'Ready Or Not' by Fugees reportedly earned him a cool £1 for every one of the 30,000 bootleg 12"s flogged from the back of vans in London in 1996. I hosted a house party on the night England got knocked out of Euro 96, and by the time the DJ dropped this one nobody gave a shit about the football any more. The song got six consecutive rewinds, before the kitchen was demolished (by my overexcited jump-up jungle loving flatmate). Joe Clay

The original, which is now heading towards its 40th anniversary yet still sounds like it was made tomorrow, remains, obviously, peerless. This remix, which Giorgio Moroder is apparently not fond of, was created by Patrick Cowley a year after 'I Feel Love's initial release, and became a huge underground hit when issued on a DJ only subscription service. Word spreading of its brilliance, it was eventually properly released in 1982 and took the single back into the Top 20 - possibly* the first time that a remix became a hit in its own right. It stretched out the original to a mindbending fifteen minutes, strapping an arsenal of space effects and mawong-y type noises to take the listener on a trip, way further than they ever thought. Because ultimately, this was gaying up what was already quite a gay record in the first place, making it harder, longer, butcher, more amyl and therefore the perfect soundtrack for a spot of NSA bumming. But context is everything - in isolation it goes on a bit and seems an unnecessary gilding of the lily, but in a rave-up situation, possibly on some drugs, it sounds like the only piece of music you will ever need. (*Having crowdsourced this opinion, some people suggested that David Bowie's 'John, I'm Only Dancing' was the first time a song had been a hit again as a remix, but that was actually a remake. We can take this outside if need be.) Ian Wade

A sludgy, steadfast remix from Burial that seems to prise open 'Paradise Circus'; revealing within the cracks and spaces a foggy urban psychogeography that has come to define our understanding of his work. And where you couldn't exactly call the original upbeat, Burial still manages to continue on a path of introversion. By giving the (increasingly fragile) vocals greater presence, and allowing the structural majority to fall away entirely, he leaves a spectral cast that might remind of some of the more ambient and abstractly led Basic Channel works (do I recognise some vaguely dub-techno chords somewhere around the 9 minute mark?), and allow flagrant usage of words like 'atmospheric' or 'cinematic'. Horrendous Discogs prices. Matthew Kent

Omni Trio - 'Renegade Snares (Foul Play Remix)'
(Moving Shadow, 1993)

Rhythm science incarnate, from the era of jungle when seething dread still coexisted side by side with open-hearted, E-lated excitement. Foul Play juggle shattered breakbeats with all the virtuosic skill of a master circus performer, yet there still remains the tantalising sensation - as those runaway snare hits threaten to tear right through the fabric holding them in place - that the jagged, multi-directional forces they generate will pull the track apart in the process. By itself, that tension would be enough to power the thing - those multilayered, windmilling drums shed their excess energy in cresting arcs through the mix - but then when it abruptly drops out to reveal that original 'Renegade Snares' piano motif it's enough to make you near lightheaded with excitement. A canonical choice, sure, but this is still one of those few tunes that makes me wish I'd been old enough to experience it on a dancefloor at the time. Rory Gibb

Hercules & Love Affair - 'Blind (Frankie Knuckles Remix)'
(DFA, 2008)

'Blind', with its soaring yet delicate vocal from Antony Hegarty, was the standout track of the much-vaunted debut by Hercules & Love Affair. There was something perhaps slightly coffee table about that Hercules & Love Affair album (albeit a huge, sumptuous coffee table photo book on Studio 54): vivid, self-consciously retro, but basically a loungey affair. Which makes its piano-led remix from legendary Chicago DJ/producer Frankie Knuckles a marriage made in heaven. 'Blind', in its original form, was an inclusive affair, with echoes of forgotten 1980s pop classic 'Voyage Voyage' by Desireless - in Knuckles' loving, piano-steeped hands, it's possessed of even broader appeal and proves genuinely tough to date (or, indeed, to beat). Nick Hutchings

Soulwax – 'E Talking (Nite Version feat. Nancy Whang)'
(PIAS, 2005)

Soulwax's influence on the club scene in the mid 2000s cannot be overstated. French touch might be better remembered for its videos, style and prescient incorporation of 1980s tropes, but after the brothers Dewaele sidelined their original material to become a full-time remixing and DJing machine, their brand of rock & roll electro was all-pervasive for a number of years. If you gubbed an overpriced bottle of water on a dancefloor in 2006, you more than likely did it soundtracked by their Nite Version of Gossip's 'Standing In The Way Of Control'. But before they resolved to push on into the void as 2manyDJs, Soulwax retooled their last album, the pretty-great-actually Any Minute Now, into a dance suite that ended up making a far greater impact. The best of these Nite Versions was 'E Talking', which removed the original guitar and Stephen's snotty tale of bad dancefloor vibes entirely, leaving just the most undeniable air-bass riff ever found in a club track, while Nancy Whang coolly lists slogans until the beat kicks in. Outstripping electroclash and invalidating nu rave before it even began, 'E Talking' represents the zenith of post-Haçienda indie dance. Ian Crichton

808 State - 'Flow Coma (Remix By AFX)'
(White Label, 2001)

The apocryphal tale involving Richard D. James and remixing is that when a record label bod turned up to his bank in Elephant & Castle to collect the master for the remix of Jesus Jones they had commissioned, a stoned James, having neglected to even start the job, just went into his studio, grabbed the nearest DAT and handed it over. Knowing RDJ, it's probably true, but if that tale enhances James's "couldn't give a shit" schtick, his remix of 'Flow Coma' by 808 State shows exactly what the man is capable of when he removes his head from his arse and puts his ample talents to good use. This is arguably his finest five minutes. From the disorientating stop-start intro, RDJ takes the central motif of the original – the acid riff and various melodic synth lines – and fucks them up beyond all recognition, with nutty vocal manipulation, ridiculous beat fuckery and a thrilling sense that the whole thing could self-destruct at any minute. It's almost as if RDJ just stuck it in a haunted blender and pressed "on" – a time-saving device the lazy bastard would definitely approve of. On release it was called simply 'Remix', as if to emphasise the fact that this is one of the finest examples of the form. Joe Clay

Ricardo Villalobos - 'Minimoonstar (Shackleton Remix)'
(Perlon, 2008)

The long-distance flirtation between dubstep's avant-garde fringe and the worldwide techno community was consummated between 2007 and 2008, with a back-forth exchange of remixes between minimal icon Ricardo Villalobos and Skull Disco's Shackleton, who was at that time sand-blasting the slender bones of his music to leave little but demented ghost whisperings, sickly air and hollowed-out percussion. Villalobos was a fan of the latter's elegiac 'Blood On My Hands', so much so that he remoulded it into his 'Apocalypso Now' remix, plunging it still deeper into the psychic void across nearly twenty minutes. That piece - the original's darkside shadow self - could easily have been included in this list, but I've opted instead for Shackleton's reciprocal reply: a take on Villalobos' frosty, mesmerising epic 'Minimoonstar'. Remixes have often provided Shackleton with the opportunity to go off-piste from his main work and find alternative territory (see also: his takes on To Rococo Rot and Geiom), but this one is particularly drastic. Forsaking the creeping anxiety that's typically been a central facet of his music, his 'Minimoonstar' is audio-tactile bliss, a zero-gravity drift through clouds of saturated reds, blues and greens that billow and effloresce like tendrils of sunlight emerging from over the horizon. Kicks and struck drums act as notional anchors to draw the track along, yet in the context they feel almost beside the point - this is a piece of music you don't so much dance to as bathe in. Rory Gibb

Justus Köhncke - 'Elan (Prins Thomas Remix)'
(Kompakt, 2007)

The crown prince of nu-disco remixing the nestor of Cologne microhouse. 'Elan' was Justus Köhncke's biggest club hit, and together with 'Time Code' more or less the soundtrack of the Cologne dance scene. Prins Thomas' version did an amazing job, making the track feel even more organic with the addition of strings; the turning of a classic into a new classic. Theo Ploeg

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - 'Mars, Arizona (DFA Remix)'
(DFA, 2006)

"You're not gonna like this at first / You're not gonna like this / How ya know you won't like it? / Uh-not at-all?!" James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy got remixing right by getting it boldly wrong. Foisting disco on the punks, rock on the dance heads, parties on the know-it-alls and beauty on the indie kids, each of their strange reconfigurations seemed driven by an innocent love of sound that left them with a tin ear for decorum. Together these monstrous mutations, sublime transformations and slinky ecstasies would define a large part of the sound of a decade, by mistake. Like LCD Soundsystem's 'Yeah', the 'Mars Arizona' remix is based on two of their best-loved tricks: Murphy's taut disco drumming and Goldsworthy's mercurially obnoxious programming. In the darkness of the dancefloor labyrinth, Jon Spencer's vocals become a warning of what's yet to arrive; after three minutes of tension, the band ignites. But in the second half, all bets are off as the sawtooth acid takes over. We're caught up in what sounds a dance-off between Flat Eric and Cthulhu, with James White holding the jackets, until some angels finally swoop in to spirit it all away. Lee Arizuno

Underworld – 'Dark & Long (Dark Train)'
(Junior Boy's Own, 1994)

Being all of six years old when this euphoric classic made its debut - and eight by the time it featured in Trainspotting and trance crossed over into newspaper covermount CD ubiquity - my only window into the seared afterimages of mid 90s club culture are now YouTube comments on dance videos. The Streets lifted a hook from 'Dark & Long (Dark Train)' for their own 'Weak Become Heroes' and, like Mike Skinner's raver's lament, those comments are beautiful below-the-line reminders that all is ephemeral (trance-ient, if you will), and not long from now you too will be wondering when everything changed without you noticing. 'Dark & Long' had originally appeared on Underworld's album from the previous year, the monumental dubnobasswithmyheadman, but their own nine-minute 'Dark Train' mix boils the track down to its most elemental: a propulsive drum loop, the oscillating bass, one or two vocal tics, and adds an unyielding synth drop of Proustian proportions. Memories smoulder, winter's colder, but that same piano loops over and over and over. Ian Crichton

Jam City - 'Ecstasy Refix'
(Night Slugs white label, 2009)

The track that introduced Jack Latham's Jam City to the world, before his landmark Classical Curves album established the steely, chrome-plated aesthetic that's come to be central to the output of both Night Slugs and their LA-based sister label Fade To Mind. The direction both Latham and his labelmates are now taking is among the most promising (and increasingly influential) contemporary developments in club music - check out the surgically precise dancefloor weaponry of Jam City's glassy-eyed 2013 12" Club Constructions Vol. 6 - but his remix of Endgames' 'Ecstasy' loses little in comparison. Okay, so next to his current output its warm, brassy synth blasts are positively lo-fi, but it still brims with energy, with drums richocheting wildly off its surface in all directions like raindrops off the windscreen of a speeding car. Released during that time when ideas from dubstep, garage and UK funky were merging into an oft-generic bass music slop, it was - and, indeed, remains - a fantastically unconventional, dynamic bit of club music. Rory Gibb

Honest Jon's' Shangaan electro remixes collection Shangaan Shake boasted one of the greatest compilation line-ups to have graced a CD in recent years. While the majority of the remixers - including Demdike Stare, Peverelist, Old Apparatus, Hype Williams and RP Boo - elected to refract Soweto's minimalist, high-speed Shangaan electro into their own disparate and largely bass-heavy styles, Theo Parrish took the characteristically scenic - and unsurprisingly repetitive - route. As with the lengthy disco extrapolations of his Ugly Edits, here Parrish focuses on mere seconds stripped from Mancingelani's 'Vani Vasesi', looping them to maddening extents. Smatterings of jazzy cymbals are layered on top, alongside signature Detroit piano stabs and lurking dissonance that never quite takes over. The track's twelve minutes are an audiophile's nightmare, a barely shifting mess of tinny high-end mud. It never steals focus from the Shangaan sample, and builds upon the furious mental energy that made that nascent style a phenomenon, taking it to the very furthest extreme. Tristan Bath

Despite being Black Leotard Front - whose 'Casual Friday' 12" is one of the shining disco peaks in DFA's back catalogue - Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's work under their own names usually tends towards more of a home listening affair - a cosmic synth, elektronische, Radiophonic workshop vibe, certainly excellent headphone music. However, this reworking by Carl Craig works in any setting. He respectfully leaves the epic arpeggiated synth intro to breathe, before dropping a sub cone tearing slab of bass and a four on the floor. There's a lot of deep, psychedelic effects work and effective use of jazzy piano and techno perc, while the actual arpeggio doesn't alter a jot. And, you know, if you don't like the original and you don't like this mix, then check out the Baby Ford remix. And, shit, if you don't like that then you probably don't like summertime and the sound of children laughing either. John Doran

The releases on early 90s hardcore label Déjà Vu and its affiliate 786 Recordings contained some real gems by Naz Khan and David Hope under many aliases, including Naz AKA Naz, Recall, Dread and - my favourite - Mind of Kane. Their, erm, "tune", 'Stabbed In The Back' stretches the definition: it's not exactly melodically beautiful, nor even conventionally danceable, instead settling for frenetic, punishing and, as its title attests, downright violent - more tattooed knuckles than Frankie Knuckles. The Et Tu Brutus remix pushes the scratchy needle into the red that bit harder - as if that seemed possible - the perfect soundtrack for releasing anger and pent-up frustration, quickly grown out of, but never forgotten. Nick Hutchings

It's always exciting to hear music at the point of transition and to be able to pinpoint the exact moment when a genre transforms itself into something fresh, exciting and new. In 1992, breakbeat and hardcore music began evolving into jungle, which in turn mutated into drum & bass, and one of the labels at the forefront of this evolution was Romford's Suburban Base. When you listen to the 2 Bad Mice remix of Phuture Assassin's 'Future Sound', you are hearing to a prototype jungle track. While incorporating many key elements of hardcore rave music of the time, the breakbeats are starting to be mangled into what would become the irregular drum patterns of jungle. It also features reggae influences, with heavy dub basslines and ragga vocal samples. The music is abrasive and aggressive, lacking the cartoony vibe prevalent in a lot of the hardcore music of the time, and this darker style would become a prerequisite of the majority of jungle music. This is a pioneering track – a stone cold classic with a musical history lesson attached. Joe Clay

Growing up, I think I masqueraded for an embarrassingly long time as a jungle/drum & bass lover at school, mostly via a lot of misplaced faith in that first Pendulum album. All young once, etc... Eventually a friend took me aside and handed me a mixed CD he'd made which set me straight, of which I remember 'Nostradamus: The Revelation' being the track I'd listen to, rewind, listen, rewind over and over. It spoke of the power of dance music to half-inch various other genre hallmarks in order to make something new and astonishing. Is this hip hop? Jungle? It's just fucking amazing. Good old Goldie. Matthew Kent

Crazy Cousinz's UK funky retooling of Paleface and Kyla's bassline track 'Do You Mind?' arrived at just the right moment: at the height of that period when funky - an all-too-brief flashpoint collision of raw-to-the-bone grime sonics and sass with the kinked motion of the global urban house community - felt like the most exciting music in the world. Buzzing with the pop nous of two-step garage and rooted in the UK's pirate radio tradition, it seemed primed to explode into the affections of the mainstream. That never happened, of course, but of all the gloriously catchy moments the genre threw up around 2007-2008 - among them DVA's 'I'm Leaving' and Ill Blu's 'Frontline' and killer refix of Shystie's 'Pull It' - 'Do You Mind?' still feels like both vanguard and highpoint. Its classicist building blocks - clattering snares, rave pianos straight outta '92, plunging organ bass tones - made it a hit on mainstream and niche floors alike; I have a clear memory of dubstep DJ Chef dropping it at a packed edition of FWD>> at Plastic People, accompanied by a frenzy of lighters thrust towards the ceiling. But ultimately it's Kyla's presence that makes the track timeless. That iconic "the whole night" refrain - preceded each time by a highly charged, slightly-too-long pause - harks both to the chemically assisted fizz of all-night raving and the thrill of intoxicated club romance: that shared sensation that anything could happen in the few short hours between now and dawn. Rory Gibb

Chances are, if you've been on a dancefloor within the last twenty-odd years, you'll have heard a track with Barbara Tucker on it. The self-proclaimed queen of house has consistently sung vocals on well-known house cuts over the last couple of decades, both in original and remixed form. In 1995, her single 'Stay Together' received full-blown remix treatment upon its release, including this gem from Armand van Helden, who skillfully crafted Tucker's disco-infused original into a slow-burning deep house belter, churning fragmented ''you've got to keep working'' vocal loops over hollowed-out foot-stomping percussion and endless, sky-high synths. Nineteen years later and, unsurprisingly, it still sounds fantastic. Sophie Coletta

In some ways, Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus' entire Basic Channel back catalogue has the feel of a remix project: a select handful of elements moulded, through live mixing and application of effects, into dramatically different structural forms each time. The drastic change they impact upon Carl Craig's 'The Climax' - originally a clipped, hectic club track released under Craig's Paperclip People alias - sheds further light on their work. 'Reshape' is an appropriate description: in their hands the original's flashy, bounding momentum is moulded inwards, with all of the music's energy piling downwards into a focused core of energy that pulses elemental at the track's centre, while glimmering almost-melodies pass like shadows through the depths. Despite chugging along at high pace, the final result seems to exist in stasis, monolithic and unchanging - a fascinating and eerie contradiction, and one primed to scramble all but the deepest and most intently focused of dancefloors. Rory Gibb

Loefah – 'Twisup (Youngsta and Task VIP)'
(DMZ, 2005)

Rising steam; bongo fills fluttering queasily like a ragged flag on some heat-cracked embassy; encroaching subs drunkenly lurching into hard focus like a Buckfast-fuelled albatross attacking a long deserted galleon - the B-side to the third release on Digital Mystikz's DMZ label is a near perfect expression of early dubstep's sweet spot linking sweaty-palmed foreboding with womblike aural sanctuary. Released in June 2005, its density of sound is astonishing – unlike many DMZ tunes of the time, this is not one that 'needs' to be heard on a rig in order to appreciate its surging power (though that, assuredly, helps) – and Youngsta and Task ramp up the energy levels of the Loefah original through constant shifts in percussive motion. It can suck the air out of a room: pure unadulterated rollige, bleak, mossy, vital. Seek it out and yours shall be the prize. Harry Sword

The Bug - 'Skeng (Autechre Remix)'
(Ninja Tune, 2010)

The Bug's London Zoo remains one of the best albums released during the Quietus' first five years of operation. Given that 'Skeng' is the highlight of said long player, simple logic dictates that it must be one of the greatest tunes of recent times, a colossus of bleak absurdist humour detailing the aftermath of street violence - "you don't want see when gunshot start / It will be like when dog'a eat tripe" - and what must happen next: "Nurse, nurse, nurse / Doctor can't fix ya send fi di hearse / Hearse, hearse, hearse / Doctor can't fix you send fi di hearse / Black, black, black / Funeral start everybody inna black / Poppa in a suit and mumma in a frock." Unimprovable, you might think. Yet Autechre manage it, stripping the track back to hollow and metal-plated beats, tiny squirts of static, the dread of the lyrics brought to the fore. Absolutely demolishes from the vinyl through a big rig. Luke Turner

On a disc largely comprised of lengthy cut-and-paste reimaginings based on the more widely known 'Bolero' and 'Pictures At An Exhibition' by Ravel and Mussorgsky respectively, it's the near-locked groove minimalist reading of Ravel's more obscure 'Rhapsodie espagnole' that quietly towers. Its classical source material - the uncharacteristically dark and moody introduction to Ravel's hispanic rhapsody - lends itself effortlessly to Moritz von Oswald's minimalist techno schooling, while Carl Craig rides along in the passenger seat for this one. A twisted lone celesta note and various string legato passages weave in and out of each other in hypnotic ouroboros loops, while newly recorded bass and percussion overdubs drive the piece along for a quarter of an hour. Perhaps it's a non-sequitur next to Carl Craig's name, but 'Movement 6' captures something of the impressionism and minimalism that unites Parisian concert halls with Berlin's post-wall techno clubs. Tristan Bath

Azzido Da Bass – 'Doom's Night (Timo Maas Remix)'
(Club Tools, 2000)

The original track, by the German DJ and producer, was a beefed-up, gormless take on Mr Oizo's infectious head-nodder 'Flat Beat'. In the hands of Azzido's compatriot Timo Maas it became a genre-defying phenomenon, reaching No. 8 in the UK Top 40 and resulting in loads of people going up to DJs in clubs and yelling, "You know mate, the one that goes, 'Wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp wampwampwampwamp wampwampwampwampwampwamp…'" Joe Clay

This is a tricky pick, because the original's lyrics are pretty homophobic and generally dubious - a problem that's been a big issue for a lot of dance music producers sampling dancehall while unaware of what the content is actually projecting - but there's a dub version on Horsepower Productions' glorious Tempa album In Fine Style which skins the bullshit and is the one to check. Surely one of the first dubstep tracks, this is cut from an area of music that I just can't enough of and dig for constantly - at that point just after UK garage but before the birth of grime when strange new sounds were being dredged up in London. There's an increasing drive towards a darker edge and the claustrophobia from dub and, yes, dancehall, that would come to possess dubstep and elements of grime - all the while still retaining that amazing two-step rhythmic swing. Matthew Kent

TRG - 'Broken Heart (Martyn's DCM Remix)'
(Hessle Audio, 2008)

If it's now tough to imagine a world without Hessle Audio, such is the speed with which they've become assimilated into the fabric of the dance music community, it actually wasn't until their fourth release, back in 2008, that they started to attract serious attention. Dutch drum & bass-turned-dubstep producer Martyn's take on TRG's 'Broken Heart' beautifully distilled the futuristic technoid sensations being hardwired into the broadening dubstep sound at the time: forsaking stomping halfstep motion and oppressive dread for fleet-footed rhythmic drive and a mood of cautious, melancholy-spiked euphoria, it was entirely more emotionally ambiguous, and all the more powerful for it. Sleek digital soul for glassy future cityscapes, possessed of an evocative charge and electric crackle to rival the best work of contemporaries like Burial and Kode9. Rory Gibb

Byetone - 'Plastic Star (Alva Noto Remix)'
(Raster-Noton, 2008)

Seldom has Alva Noto's architectural background been more apparent. Byetone's original is a sharp tonal mission statement - compositionally simple, relatively streamlined and lacking gristle. Using typically Raster-Noton sonics (processed tones and digital fizz), 'Plastic Star' sees snatched lines of whirring static mashed with an throbbing bass and beat dialogue, implying near-melodies somewhere in the mix. Noto's version drastically redesigns the original structure, chopping and slicing gaps in the fuzz, adding high pitch bleeps and glitches to craft sickly danceable staccato rhythms from Byetone's more staunchly minimal original. The duo ultimately paired up properly in 2012, four years after this remix's release to form Diamond Version, releasing five stellar EPs of madman techno last year that similarly balance Noto's axe-like edits and glitches with Byetone's increasingly beat-led excursions. Tristan Bath

The Honeydrips – 'Fall From A Height (The Field Way)'
(Sincerely Yours, 2007)

Axel Willner has made a career out of cutting up other people's songs to blend into something wholly unrecognisable, and his repurposing of Swedish synthpop project The Honeydrips rates among his finest moments. Mikael Carlsson's Honeysdrips released one album in 2007 and drifted away, but the Field's exceptional remix lives on. Owing a lot to 90s euphoria and some to the Chemical Brothers' 'Star Guitar', Willner takes the brightest spots from what was originally a pale twee pop downer and turns it into a balmy Balearic beast. All the old Field tricks are present: a metronome beat, micro snatches of a vocal buried somewhere, and a drop in the track that could be the result of a software error but sounds great anyway. A thrilling display of the power of the remix – everything has its value, if this kind of transformation can take place. Ian Crichton

Before gunning straight into the stratosphere as a big shot producer for the likes of Madonna, Kylie Minogue, The Killers and more recently the Pet Shop Boys' Electric, Stuart Price was a pretty seminal figure in electroclash as Les Rythmes Digitales. It figures, then, that he was invited to remix Felix Da Housecat and Miss Kittin's 'Silver Screen Shower Scene' - perhaps the genre's defining moment. With typical nonchalance, the original barely shifts trajectory and neither does Kittin's deadpan delivery, while Price - under his Thin White Duke nom de plume, and less concerned with impersonating an emotionless robot - remoulds the simplistic groove into an eight and a half minute club-ready epic, string section and all. Wobbly klaxon-like keyboards clash with dancehall snare vamps, as Price takes the tune higher and higher, ultimately disintegrating back into the synthetic bed of strings from whence it arose. Tristan Bath

LCD Soundsystem - 'Tribulations (Lindstrøm Remix)'
(DFA, 2005)

Pure and simple four-to-the-floor disco always pulsed at the very deepest core of James Murphy and the gang, never more audibly than on their anthem-filled debut album. Hans-Peter Lindstrøm was already a purveyor of retro, space-bound disco instrumentals of his own, releasing a string of masterful EPs in 2005, but his brilliant reworking of LCD's 'Tribulations' - included on the single released in September that year - remains a high watermark for both himself and Murphy. Dusty guitar strings and hiss usher in Lindstrøm's several inversions of 'Tribulations'' core theme. Swapping the bouncy synth bass of the original for an arpeggiated line nabbed straight from Giorgio Moroder and a face-meltingly cool clavinet line, Lindstrøm's version marches along, convincingly impersonating mid-70s grooves like the Commodores' 'Machine Gun' with a little something of the dissonant edge that characterised NYC's no wave disco movement that followed. While Murphy's original punches you in the face with a stone cold slice of disco-inspired punk, Lindstrøm morphs it into the punk-inspired disco it was always meant to be. Tristan Bath

In 1992, Front Line Assembly took an abrasive industrial track that sampled both Slayer and James Brown and turned it into a brilliant acidic footstomper. That track was in fact their own 'The Blade', a murky electronic soundscape that first found its place on their excellent album Tactical Neural Implant. While initially perhaps a little too restrained for dancefloors, it still tingled with their sensibility, and the group proceeded to romp up the tempo for a 12" alternate take, urging the tart stabs of synth to lift the whole thing into a churning industrial techno banger that drags you by the frontal lobes straight onto the dancefloor. It's all about that moment, around the four-minute mark, where the whole thing breaks down into a splurgy hands-aloft interlude, pitched-down vocals urging you to move, to destroy anything in your way. Sophie Coletta

One of my favourite remix compilations is the Mutant Throbbing Gristle collection of reworkings of Throbbing Gristle. The pioneering foursome's influence on techno is well documented, and fair tribute is paid here via Carl Craig's tactile reworking of 'Hot On The Heels Of Love' which, with its melodic caress, Cosey Fanni Tutti's siren whispers and leathery beat, teases all the sex out of the track to marvelously stirring effect. My favourite on the disc, though, has always been the simpler pleasures of Carter Tutti's 'HotHeelsUnited'. Chris Carter and Cosey weld together 'United' and 'Hot On The Heels Of Love' into a fiendish and randy techno automaton that casts Genesis P-Orridge as the human part of the machine, his disembodied vocals intoning "love is the law", over and over. TG command, we and you obey - if used correctly, this track has a curious effect on fashionable teenagers. Luke Turner

Celso Valli is well known among collectors of Italian disco, having produced Macho's 'I'm A Man', Passengers' 'Hot Leather' and Taffy's 'I Love My Radio', but undoubtedly his crowning glory was presiding over session group Tantra's 'Hills Of Katmandu'. This faux Eastern, high-BPM Italo disco classic is still dancefloor gold to this day. In fact, the original is so good that many people seem to suffer under the misapprehension that it actually is the Patrick Cowley version. However - as revealed to us unfortunate souls who were never able to track it down on vinyl or who were listening to mislabelled MP3s - last year's Tantra: The Collection on Disco Discharge shows the remix to be exactly the same song, except festooned in poppers, vintage synths and glitter. Muscular, lithe and pulsating, it is an orgone accumulator of pure shivering electro disco technique, and an obvious influence on some of Lindstrøm's deeper cuts. John Doran

Indie rock and house blending together. A handful of German producers remixed the album K.O.O.K. by Tocotronic, the already well-known rock crew from the famous Hamburg School. The results are astonishing. Console's version of 'Freiburg 3.0' became a classic cult hit in Germany and The Netherlands, eventually making way for more collaborations between indie rockers and dance producers in Germany. Theo Ploeg

While not being the first example of the form, this was one of the first tracks that brought the concept of the 'bootleg' into the public consciousness. As The Source, the British dance producer John Truelove was making a series of tracks that fused acapella vocals with instrumental dance tracks when he spliced the vocal of Candi Staton's God-praising gospel/disco number 'You Got The Love' with Jamie Principle's house classic 'Your Love', creating an enduring club classic in the process. Like all the best bootlegs, the two tracks are virtually inseparable from each other now, despite the best efforts of Florence Welch to ruin the song by popping up all over 2010 wailing her overblown cover. First released in 1991 when it sold more than 200,000 copies, it was remixed and re-released in 1997, with a new version that polished up and slowed down the original and reached No. 3 in the hit parade. Joe Clay

I have an inordinate fondness for Holden's 'The Sky Was Pink' remix, in part because it seemed to be everywhere right around the time my mind was opening to the twin joys of electronic sound and staying up far too late. I'm far from the only one, though, as this luscious, woozily romantic trance/techno epic remains a spot-on musical description of honeymoon-period ecstasy experience - initial pleasurable glimmers and the shock of recognition building to a sustained, giddy peak. 'Please play slowly', cautioned the 12"s artwork upon release, both a riposte to the swifter motion of the minimal techno sound that was becoming ubiquitous at the time, and a fair warning: Holden piles strobing melodic matter onto its slender rhythmic skeleton to the extent that the track seems to accelerate as it plays, a seriously disruptive proposition for dancers if the DJ's already pitched it up to +8. Rory Gibb

Oft-dismissed as a just pair of radioactive dust-masked dancing monkeys dropping heavy hardcore at early 90s outdoor raves, and to some a zeitgeisty novelty act, much of Altern-8's catalogue remains timeless. Such was the anthemic quality of the airhorn-bleating original 'Infiltrate 202' that this equally huge remix saw fit to reprise the original's intro vocal sample "Watch your bassbins, I'm telling ya", while adding a twist of an alternate ending: "No, not bassbins - brain cells. It's had a remix, I'm telling ya!" What follows is a Kevin Saunderson-inspired makeover, all hi-hats and acid ripples, to the point that it could truly be a club anthem by Inner City (no bad thing). The original's madness isn't totally lost, as it occasionally veers into wilder territory, but it remains conclusive proof that there was an alternate story to Altern-8 lurking behind the masks. Nick Hutchings

Perc and Fractal – 'Up (Perc Remix)'
(Speicher, 2007)

If Kompakt subsidiary Speicher tends toward the harder end of the Cologne powerhouse's oeuvre, then Perc is responsible for what is surely its most belting transmission thus far. The original – included on the flip - was a beatless drone experiment, all scratchy synths and elongated fizz. But his solo remix is, in all honesty, semi-pornographic in conception and execution. A gaudy, whooping beast, it builds for about five minutes. Jaw clenching, palm dripping, chemical sweating, it takes the most base of cyclonic wind-ups to the very furthest of extremes while reveling in sheer sonic excess. By the time the crunchy, overcompressed drums finally drop, hard, with a scant inch and a half of vinyl left you'll grin like a glutton. Harry Sword

Blondes – 'Water (Bicep Mix)'
(RVNG Intl, 2012)

Deeper than the Mariana trench, the Belfast duo take the Brooklynites' exquisite trance-house original and slather it in reverb, muscular house beats and otherworldly vocal trimmings. At one point, they remove the bottom end, leaving just the treble, before shoving the bass back in like a man trying to force a 13-tog duvet into a matchbox. One for when you're lost in the K-hole and not even Scotty can beam you back up again. Joe Clay

A Split Second - 'Flesh (The 33+8 Mix)'
(FFRR, 1991)

To be honest, the original version of 'Flesh' isn't that great - Electronic Body Music with a touch of dark new wave. The track was released in 1986, and did a good job at the many darkwave and gothic parties in Belgium - until DJ Marc Grouls played the single at 33 1/3 rpm with pitch-control +8. The crowd in club Boccaccio in Destelbergen (near Ghent) went mad and, so the legend goes, new beat was born. The new beat version was released in 1991, though at that time new beat - under the influence of techno and house - had already evolved into eurohouse. Theo Ploeg

Mory Kanté - 'Yeke Yeke (Hardfloor Remix)'
(Barclay, 1994)

Mory Kanté is a Guinean vocalist whose 1987 hit 'Yé ké yé ké' was a massive hit all over Europe, becoming the first African single to shift one million copies. The song had an unlikely renaissance in 1994 when the German techno duo Oliver Bondzio and Ramon Zenker, aka Hardfloor, got their hands on it. The duo had a formula that involved wringing every last drop of life out of the Roland TB-303, injecting their repetitive, one-dimensional acid-techno bangers with oodles of soul, humour and creativity, and causing sensations in the listener ranging from madness to euphoria. All of these facets are present and correct in this remix, though to these ears, it's the dub mix of 'Yeke Yeke' – a version without Kante's evocative vocals – that's the definitive take, but that's just me being a purist. The vocal gave the track an accessibility that made the remix a global crossover success. Joe Clay

Appleblim - 'Vansan (T++ Remix)'
(Skull Disco, 2008)

I remember Blackest Ever Black's Kiran Sande once writing about the presence of Horsepower Productions in Berlin's T++; of a shared, unconventional rhythmic quantity that spoke of swing and precise intensity. I can't think of a more perfect example of the latter than his remix of Appleblim's 'Vansan', one his (relatively) straighter cuts with percussion that pierces holes in you and lets those gorgeous ascending pads seep in. Matthew Kent

This is probably my favourite thing Actress has touched, which is frankly amazing because I always groan when I see Panda Bear guest featuring on an electronic producer's album (still can't listen to that one on Black Noise, still don't like that Zomby track). Note, though, that it has to be the extended cut, where all the beauty of a polyrhythm, the hypnotism of those musical spirals, and that undulating bassline slowly swathe you. I feel sorry for the poor buggers who initially bought the 7" (a paltry 4 and half minutes long in comparison) when this extended 12" version was released a month later. Matthew Kent

The first solo release from David Holmes was named after the character Mickey Rourke's downbeat private eye Harry Angel is paid to track down in Angel Heart. The Belfast DJ/producer eventually made his name scoring film soundtracks such as Out Of Sight and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, and while this isn't an actual soundtrack, 'Johnny Favourite', released by Warp Records in 1994, plays out much like a film, moving through different stages of pace and mood before hurtling towards its incendiary denouement. The track features the briefest snatch of dialogue from the film (an eerie whispering of the name "Johnny"), along with samples of the trip down the lift shaft (the clanking sound that occurs throughout) undertaken by Angel at the end of the film. These elements are woven into an epic 15-minute excursion through the realms of intense percussive techno and atmospheric mood music. 'Johnny Favourite' was a co-production with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns from Sabres of Paradise, and it actually sounds a lot like the Sabres output from the same period. On the rare occasions I've heard it played out, the climax tears the roof off. Joe Clay

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